July 28, 1999
BY HEATHER NEWMAN and DAVID CRUMM FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
We've never owned so many things.
Our houses have doubled in size in the last 40 years to hold all this stuff. Our cars are bigger; even our refrigerators have grown.
But there's a dark lining to this silver cloud. Despite the economic boom of the last decade, we're buying more than we can afford, and paying the price in stress and financial problems.
A lot of people are feeling the squeeze. According to a Free Press poll of 600 Michigan residents, almost 40 percent, including people in every income bracket, say they can't afford everything they need for a comfortable life.
Even those who aren't in a financial bind say the glow of ownership can be fleeting. About half of those surveyed said they either wanted to, or already had, cut back on the number of things they need. The feeling was especially strong among baby boomers.
But most people haven't cut much. Although consumer interest in simpler lifestyles is on the rise, our closets remain full.
"People hold onto these fantasies about themselves as not being all that engaged in consumption -- even as they are becoming extraordinarily engaged in consuming things," said Juliet Schor, a senior lecturer at Harvard University and author of "The Overspent American." "People have this idea that they can live without things, when, in fact, they don't live without them."
So how did we end up with all this stuff? Some of it is just darn convenient.
David Hile, an illustrator in Ann Arbor, vowed that he would never own a cellular phone.
"I thought it was very pretentious for people to carry these phones around," he said. Then his wife, Claudia, was involved in a car accident, and he decided to buy her a cell phone for Christmas -- for emergencies. He ended up buying two, thanks to a special deal he found.
Within a week, he was driving home from work and saw the phone on the seat beside him. He called Claudia and asked what was for dinner. Days later, he called from a sporting event to ask whether he should pick up a video on the way home.
Soon Hile found himself parking outside his house and calling his wife to move her car when it was blocking the driveway.
Ironically, by his example, Hile may now be encouraging others to buy their own phones. That's right: He's one of the Joneses.
Keeping up with the Joneses
We're constantly comparing our shopping lists with people around us, experts say. And thanks to television and movies, the people around us include a host of trend-setting celebrities. It was tough enough keeping up with the Joneses when they were merely a couple next door. But now the Joneses may include the likes of Michael Jordan and Calista Flockhart.
Thousands of people have bought Ally McBeal's pajamas, Monica's lipstick and Seinfeld's Snapple. It's even getting easier to find products you see on screen: A new Web site, officially launching in September but available in limited form now at
www.AsSeenIn.com, invites you to click on items from the sets of your favorite TV shows and movies to find out how to buy them.
Our wish lists are filling up not only with the latest fashion, food, music and cars, but with toys that new technology brings. Twenty-five years ago, microwaves, VCRs, video camcorders, cellular phones and home computers either were unavailable or were not widely used. Now, they're necessities in many homes.
We also question the worth of perfectly functional things we already own. New models, slickly promoted, make our old gear seem hopelessly inadequate.
Look what happened to golf clubs. We don't just whack a 1-wood off the first tee anymore. We unleash the Great Big Bertha Hawk Eye Titanium Driver (retail price $399.99), featuring the exclusive tungsten gravity screw.
Need vs. want
"Differentiating between 'need' and 'want' is a difficult hurdle," said Alix Ott of Battle Creek. "Ninety-eight percent of what we buy is a want, not a need. But we are forever being shown how we can be happy and fulfilled, not to mention thin and desirable, if we have just one more doodad."
Ott, 45, and her husband were living large in San Francisco, working 14-hour days to pay for shopping sprees and bimonthly trips to Lake Tahoe. Then her son dropped out of high school, and she blames herself and her husband for not being home much. Her blood pressure skyrocketed, and she developed other health problems.
In August 1995, the family decided to move to Michigan, change to less stressful jobs and start over. Now, Ott says her life is healthier and less harried.
Ads and peer pressure are especially hard on kids.
"It's hard when the kids want things and we say no," said Nancy Parmenter, 58, a writer in Armada. "Our children are grown now, but there was a time when they thought we were cruel to deny them things that 'everyone' had. Snowmobiles and motorcycles come to mind."
Some of these purchases have nothing to do with what's convenient or what our neighbors are doing. They have more to do with how we see ourselves: an artist, an outdoor type, a sophisticate. For example, said Schor, "People who buy boats or cabins and then rarely use them, I think, are buying these things as anchors for their fantasy lives."
Our self image is shaped partly by how much we earn.
"People's sense of what they need grows with their income. Most people who make $100,000 a year have the idea that they ought to live like they earn $100,000 a year," said marketing expert Al Ries of Georgia, who has worked with companies such as IBM and Burger King.
Ries said that's probably why one quarter of the people in the Free Press survey who made more than $100,000 a year said they need to earn more to afford life's necessities.
People don't think of themselves as buying frivolous stuff, the survey shows. Those who buy new things find uses for them. When people were asked to rate items on how necessary they were in their lives, they gave things much higher scores if they owned them.
Getting left out
Folks who don't buy popular products start to drift out of the mainstream.
"Living a simpler lifestyle has been challenging, because I feel as though I am not in sync with many people in my life," said Anna Walsh, a secretary at the University of Michigan who lives in a small apartment, resists buying furniture and takes the bus to and from work so she doesn't have to own a car. "When this becomes too challenging, then of course, my life is no longer simple."
Don Aslett, author of 30 books on cleaning up clutter and the owner of a service that cleans 200 million square feet of office space, says that people face two main hurdles: too busy and too much.
"I'm convinced that the 'too busy' is from the 'too much.' You get rid of the 'too much,' and the 'too busy' goes away," he said.
The true cost of an item can be much higher than the sticker price, he said. There's the cost of storing it, cleaning it, maintaining it, insuring it and the time you think about it, worry about it or talk about it. Sometimes you even pay to get rid of it.
Multiply that by all the things in your life, ranging from big-ticket items like your house and your car to the little things, like that collection of Beanie Babies, and you begin to see the impact that buying things has had on your life.
Brian and Katrina Chinavare, both 30 and school librarians, say their accumulation of stuff has filled up their tri-level home in Tecumseh -- and left them stressed about what they'll toss to make room for more.
"Brian and I have been talking a lot about this recently. It makes us wonder: Do we even have room to have kids? We've been thinking about having kids, but now we're thinking we should wait a couple of years. I can't have kids until I narrow down my own collection of toys."
"How did my parents do it?" she wonders. "My parents bought a 1,000-square-foot house in Westland for under $15,000 in 1958 and raised four girls there. They still live there 41 years later."
Virtually none of the advocates of a simpler lifestyle suggests that you toss things wholesale. More important is to buy things consciously, aware of what they will cost, how many hours you'll have to work to pay the true price of the item, and how much enjoyment they will bring, they say.
Take Aslett. He's a multimillionaire, owns seven companies and has a large ranch. But he also owns just one pair of shoes: black leather with rubber soles, repaired multiple times in the last 10 years.
"I got one pair of shoes. I'm not a weirdo. I live rich. I have good things," he said. "One pair is all I need."
Simplifying trend
The movement toward a simpler life -- less time at work, less stress, less stuff -- has sparked recent cover stories in magazines.
It's an idea that comes and goes in America, wrote David Shi in his book, "The Simple Life." People have been advocating a simple life since biblical times, with Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau championing it in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's a cycle: People buy more in good times, then talk about cutting back as the stress becomes overwhelming.
Eventually the boom ends, and the discussion becomes moot.
The last swell of interest in consumer cutbacks began in the mid-50s, when the economy was strong and many families were buying new things at a tremendous pace. In 1955, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "Gift from the Sea" was published in part as a response to the increasing pressure to buy, be and do in that decade. "I mean to lead a simple life," she wrote, "to choose a simple shell I can carry easily."
The peak of that cycle hit during the hippie movement of the '60s, then began to decline. By the '70s, the idea of being selective about what to buy had begun to feel like self-denial, and by the 80s, it was almost blasphemous.
The cycle appears to be turning again, perhaps because of the approaching turn of the century, which may be causing people to re-examine their values.
The Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y., estimates that 15 percent of baby boomers are actively choosing a simpler life now, and predicts that more will join them in the next 10 years.
One of the bibles of the movement, "Your Money or Your Life," was published in 1992 and steadily built sales. Now books on simplicity and buying less are flooding the market. Reader's Digest has even launched a publishing division called Simpler Life.
Downshifters who drop out of the corporate rat race are still the exception -- but, based on the Free Press poll and others, it may not be long before taking at least a limited interest in cutting back becomes the rule.
Linda Pierce, whose upcoming book "Choosing Simplicity" profiles 211 downshifters, said many of her subjects started cutting back after a major life event: birth, death, illness or job change. It's not that the event caused the need to cut back in all cases, she said. In most, it just provided people with an opportunity to re-examine their lives.
For folks who don't take that step voluntarily, the push may come in the form of a flood of overdue notices. Despite the economic boom of the last 10 years, the U.S. savings rate in May dipped to the lowest level since the Depression: minus 1.2 percent. As a country, we're spending more than we make.
"People have tried to live a lifestyle beyond their means," said Michael Kidwell, vice president and cofounder of Debt Counselors of America. "Credit has given them that opportunity ...Experts say most people are three months away from going broke. I think that's generous. I think most people are one to two paychecks away from financial trouble."
Eventually, something's got to give, Schor said. Unless people start cutting back, "You may even have to buy stress-relief services, because you're working so hard," she said. "We find ourselves caught in this cycle, because we live in a world in which we solve problems by buying things -- and in which buying things creates new problems for us."
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